Pubs of Manchester

Friday, 17 February 2012

173. Apotheca, Thomas Street

We'd heard that Apotheca had started doing decent beer and "All Hail the Real Ale" read the sign that poked out of the snow-covered Thomas Street pavement. The sight of one forlorn Flowers IPA handpump was frankly disappointing but we gave it a try and it wasn't that bad, apart from having the taste and temperature of the tinned Flowers of my youth. The young barman was pleasantly enthusiastic, even offering us a taster of, ahem, Stella Artois Black, along with InBev's marketing leaflet. Remarkably, the Stella Black is a real improvement on the reassuringly-expensive UK-mixed slurry, and is apparently brewed in Belgium. Good tunes, an attached pizza place (Dough), a European-bar-vibe, and seemingly more relaxed than some of its Thomas Street peers, Apotheca isn't bad at all.